The fact that 'fixed' appearance hirelings is a thing is a crying shame. It makes zero sense to NOT be able to customise them. I like playing as a variety of races, Halfings (still waiting on someone making a Ghostwise Halfling mod), Dwarves, Dragonborn etcetera etcetera but with all 'main' companions being Human, Elf, Half Elf or Tiefling and a relatively limited selection of the fixed Hirelings, it's impossible to assemble say, a party of Dwarves or have a pair of Dragonborn (or whatever combination you might wish for). It also leads onto the 'issue' of playing a short race and only having 'tall' love interests... but that's a whole other rabbit hole that I've read several complaints about already. I'm hoping Larian themselves make moves to resolve this but I'm thinking it'll probably be down to mods to get a party that we REALLY want.
That, and multiple companions have room to be different races.
1. Lae'zel obviously needs to be Githyanki
2. Shadowheart could be any race's female, no need to be half-elf.
3. Gale could be a male wizard of any race.
4. Wyll could probably be any race as well, as long as you transform his father along with him. I do see human fitting better.
5. Astarion could probably be any tall race except Orc or Dragonborn. Probably works better with the more mundane races (elf, human, ...).
6. Karlach is Karlach, backstory is too specific for her to be anything other than Tiefling.
7. Halsin could be any race's large buff male.
8. Jaheira is Jaheira.
9. Minsc is Minsc.
10. Don't know anything about Minthara yet, so I can't judge there.
